Nightmare Boss Breaker on Artix Entertainment

Nightmare CactusChan drops

Challenge Nightmare CactusChan in the Wasteland desert for a chance to receive new Nightmare drops based on CactusChan's previous Gifting prizes!

Nightmare Cactus Crusher P - 10%
Nightmare Cactus Crusher E - 10%
Nightmare Cactus Conflagrator - 2%
Nightmare Cactus Corrupter - 2%
Nightmare Pachycereus Pringlei - 3%
Nightmare Stenocereus Thurberi - 3%
Nightmare Malediction - 5%
Nightmare Anathema - 5%

Remember, to battle Nightmare CactusChan, you'll first have to progress in the mission chain Nightmare in the Desert!

Daily Boss Bounties

View the Boss Slayer Leaders on Slayer in the Barrens for the latest daily boss bounty! Defeat the selected boss the most for the day to receive the Boss Breaker achievement! New boss bounties are selected at the end of the day when the leaderboards reset. To recognize boss duo teams, we will award achievements to the top daily boss battlers in the event of a tie.

The first daily bounty will be, appropriately enough, Nightmare CactusChan!

Battlepass Enhancements

In preparation of the upcoming Technomancer Battlepass, we've added some polish and perks to the Battlepass systems.

Battlepass Enhanced button shows Varium price.
Enhanced pass grants 20% more Battlepass XP. During Power Hour, this increases to 40%.
Battlepass rewards now show a description of Robot/Core abilities.
Challenges will display increased XP.
Challenge progress/completion notifications are queued so when you progress multiple challenges, you will see each popup in a queue. A max of 5 popups will display, with additional popups appearing as the visible ones are closed or disappear on their own.
Challenge popups now show whether it's a daily or weekly challenge.
Completed challenges receive a unique popup animation.

NPC AI Overhaul

EpicDuel's NPCs were due for an upgrade. Maybe few of the current players remember, but NPC's were basically lobotomized in the Omega update. NPC AI was one of the last features to be carried over and it was drastically simplified in the transition. Before, NPC's had much greater battle context and complex assessments for the ideal skills vs ideal targets. To catch up with 2026, we've performed a major overhaul of NPC AI. We may need to adjust this further as we get more battle feedback (there are over 200 NPCs so sorting out all the potential quirks in one week is impossible), but it should make NPCs more compelling opponents and more intelligent partners.

RNG Rewrite
Before: NPCs picked what to do using a mix of random chance and random shuffling. Even when one option was clearly better, there was a real chance the AI would pick something worse just because RNG said so. Healing only kicked in at a flat 30% HP.
After: NPCs now weigh every possible move, basic attack, skills, healing, shielding, on the same scale based on how much good each one would actually do in the moment. Whichever option scores highest wins. No more coin-flips between an obviously good move and an obviously bad one.
Optimization
We also cut out a bunch of duplicate, unnecessary calculations the AI was running behind the scenes. This doesn't change how NPCs behave, but it does make the server work less hard to get there. A necessary change for more complex AI behavior.
Smarter Targeting
Before: if an NPC had a single-target skill, it almost always aimed at the same "default" enemy, even if another enemy was an easier target.
After: the AI now checks every enemy individually for single-target skills and can go after whoever's most vulnerable, instead of always picking the same target out of habit. (This doesn't apply to AOE skills.)
Heal Plz
If a partner drops below 25% HP, the AI will prioritize healing them, even if it normally wouldn't bother at that point in a fight, unless the enemy is also nearly dead (under 20% HP), in which case the NPC will go for the killing blow. Basically: heal when the fight's still close, but always take the kill when possible.
Finish Him!
Before: the AI only recognized a "finishing move" opportunity based on percentages: if an enemy was below 20% of its own max HP. That meant some low-HP enemies who were actually one hit away from dying didn't get flagged as finishable, and the AI would sometimes heal instead of just ending the fight.
After: the AI now directly compares how much damage a move would deal against the enemy's actual remaining HP. If a move would likely kill, it gets a big score boost that beats out healing or anything else so NPCs are much better at recognizing "I can end this right now."

TL;DR: NPC enemies and allies used to make randomized choices based on battle condition (current HP/Energy, cooldowns). Now they compare their options directly, recognize real kill opportunities, manage their resources better, and make smarter calls about when to heal versus when to attack in both 1v1 and 2v2 fights.

Quality of Life

War Leaderboards now allow you to click through to the character page or Faction page of the leaders.
Factions will allow you to click through to the character page of members.
Added "Shop" identifier to NPCs on the Map interface that have an available shop
Inventory and Merchant interfaces now show if items have cores equipped with colors and icons.
Favorited or Locked items now have icons to indicate status rather than (*) or (x).
Rearranged Settings options for improved organization.

Thank you for your patience as we work diligently to improve the EpicDuel experience!